Pandora's Box
by WhaleSong
Summary: Original BSG - The Galactica finally arrives at Earth, but not quite in the way anyone expected. Note: This story may be considered too dark by some, but that's how it was intended to be.


The great ship moves through space, seeking its final goal until at last the blue-green world appears on its screens. Engines rumbling beneath its decks, the behemoth settles into orbit, tired from the long journey but still the greatest fighting machine that the Colonies ever created. Sunlight glints off the silver metal, scarred from many yahren of travel.

On the planet below they are already scrambling, mobilizing planetary defenses against any possible threat that the great ship may represent. Land-to-Space Interceptors, the latest in Earth technology, are fueled and launched, deadly black darts rising quickly through the atmosphere to determine whether generals or diplomats are needed. The pilots approach her cautiously, eyeing the weapons emplacements on the outside of the huge ship.

"Cap...that writing on the side...it kinda looks like Greek, don't you think? You read Ancient Greek?"

"Negative, Arrow Three, and cut the chatter. I'm trying to listen for communication signals from her."

Arrow One, also known as Captain Michael Gabrielson of the United Earth Air Force, kept his distance for a while, scanning all frequencies...both common and uncommon...to see if anything was coming from the unknown ship. "I hope we don't have to fight her," he mutters, "because anything that big has to take a lot of punishment without batting an eyelash." Worried eyes reflect the light from his instruments as his gaze turns once more to the readings. "Report in, what do you have?"

His crew, always a good team despite the tendency to chatter too much, quickly does their work and soon reports that there doesn't seem to be any kind of life on board. At least none that was recognizable as such. Even though they're separated by vacuum, helmeted heads turn in the direction of Arrow One, looking at him through tinted visors as they await his verdict.

"All right boys and girls, she looks like a derelict to me, probably set on autopilot. We're going on guard rotation, a third in the air at any given time until the eggheads can get a look at her and tell us to go home and relax. Alpha Team has first shift. Beta and Gamma can head back to the barn. Beta, be ready to get back here in four hours."

Eight of the ebony darts peel off and head back toward the planet, almost invisible against the endless night sky. The remaining four spread out and take up compass point positions around the intruding giant, their presence only apparent by the absence of the stars whose light they block. Idle speculation abounds during the thirty-six hours of guard duty, only to be intensified when the Special Forces team approaches in their shuttle. The guarding Arrow pilots watch as the shuttle flies into the maw of what had been determined to be the landing bay. Blue light bathes the shuttle as it passes through the opening, then disappears inside. An hour later the Arrows are ordered to head for home, with a warning not to talk about this with anyone...even each other.

* * *

Dr. Stanton shakes his head, "Madam President, we can't tell you much yet. We've got linguists working, but until the languages can be made compatible, we don't know if they're telling us the secret to life, or reading a grocery list." His expression is serious as he faces the image of the silver-haired woman before him. 

Janine Matthews sighs and rubs her tired green eyes. Why her? That's all she wants to know. Why not some other President? "Do we at least know if they're friendly or not?" she asks the intent scientist.

John Stanton unconsciously echoes the President's sigh. "I wish that I could tell you. We're taking all of the precautions that we can, but to be honest, from the level of technology we've seen so far, if they wanted to, they could wipe us out without a second thought. For all that we know, they're just assessing the situation from afar."

President Matthews grimaces, "Always the positive thinker, Doctor?" then waves off his next comment. "I know, I know, you're just being cautious. All right, how much longer until the language team can crack this modern Rosetta Stone?"

"We'll have it for you within another forty-eight hours."

* * *

It looks so innocent, the transcript that she holds in her hand. The linguistic teams had printed it out with the original symbols on one side of the page and the translation on the other. The President studies the shapes of those alien letters, so similar to languages seen on Earth, but different at the same time. A strange reluctance to actually read these words from afar comes over her for a moment, then she shakes her head and murmurs, "What have we got to say to each other?" and begins to read...

* * *

My name is Pandora, and this is my story. It's more than just my story, really. It's the story of our ship, of our Fleet, of our Colonies. You see, someone had to tell it, and I guess that someone is me. 

Who am I? Well, that's probably a good question since you don't know anything about us. I'm a Caprican. That doesn't mean as much as it used to. When our worlds, the Twelve Colonies, were destroyed by the mechanical race known as the Cylons, we still held things like planetary origin to be valuable. We learned over time, though, that no matter which planet we had started on, we were all members of the same Fleet. Of course, that's not to say that we didn't have our little squabbles. Heh. We had more of those than I could ever begin to tell you about. But that's okay, you can get that from the history tapes, I suppose. I know that they say the Commander used to keep journals, like his father did. The tapes of the Destruction are in the memory banks too. I know that we watched them often enough. It was almost morbid, how fascinated people were by it. I think that some people felt that they could pretend it was just an IFB show if they watched it enough. Oh...sorry. IFB is short for Interfleet Broadcasting. I'm not really much of a historian, so you'll have to bear with my little slip-ups.

Anyway, like I said, I was from Caprica. Well, my parents were anyway. Mother was pregnant with me when the Cylons attacked the Colonies. She made it to a ship, my father didn't. But everyone lost someone that day, and most people lost more than one someone. Most people were thankful that we'd gotten away. I guess that we didn't realize then that the ones who died might have been the lucky ones.

Our first quarters were on the Rising Star. It was fun growing up on that ship because that's where all of the entertainment was. Triad games, music, gambling for the adults. We didn't get to go into the casino because kids weren't allowed in there, but my friends and I would watch the adults from the doorway until we were chased away. It was what we imagined that life on the Colonies must have been like. You see, we were all too young to remember the Colonies. I was the youngest, and the only one to have been born on the ship. Everyone else was little when the Destruction happened.

I remember the light the most, I think. Everything glittered in the casino, chrome and glass and sequins reflecting even the tiniest bits of light until they bounced around the room to form a brilliant glow. It seemed like nothing bad could ever happen in those rooms. I was too young to realize that the light was only there to keep the shadows of everyday life away in this one place. The laughter always had a wild edge to it that I didn't understand until I was older and the Rising Star was long gone. It was the hysterical kind of laughter that people use to hide their worries, acting like nothing is wrong in their world when there's really nothing that's right.

There was music too. Dancing and singing, all of the most popular technohits, songs that had been making the rounds before the Colonies were destroyed. Eventually, though, we needed the components of the instruments and they were cannibalized for use on the ships. We learned to make do with simpler instruments, the types that our forefathers had used. I found out that I'm actually pretty good with a tinwhistle. If this weren't just a journal, I would play a few songs for you. I wish that you could hear them. I doubt that anyone has bothered to record any of the new music, and it's sad to think that it will never be heard again anywhere in the universe. We've lost so much...

Anyway, the Rising Star was abandoned when I was around ten yahren old. That was a couple of yahren after the Council finally admitted what everyone else had figured out a while before. You see, we finally realized that the Cylons had won. Their goal was to wipe out the human race, to remove us from the universe completely and totally...

* * *

The President pauses in her reading. Her face is grim as she digests the words of the journal's author. Wipe out the human race. And the ship had come to Earth...possibly leading these Cylons, whatever they are, straight here. She hesitates, torn between calling an immediate meeting and finishing the journals. "I need to know more information." she mutters softly to herself. "Maybe they wiped the Cylons out." She still feels uneasy as she settles back and begins to read once more.

* * *

Their goal was to wipe out the human race, to remove us from the universe completely and totally, and if they couldn't do it by blasting every ship out of the night sky, they would do it another way. 

It took a while for everyone to settle in after the Destruction. We all had to build lives within the Fleet, or what passed for lives. Skills that people had forgotten they had came into use, other skills that were prized on the Colonies now became obsolete. I remember walking through the hallways of our new ship, the Flora, with my mother and listening to her voice as she was greeted by another agro worker. When we were back in our room, I asked why she had been so surprised to see him there, and she told me that on Caprica he'd been a rather well known investment manager. I was puzzled and asked what that was and she explained it to me. He had taken people's cubits and bought things that would increase in value so that the people could later sell them to make a profit. It was a hard thing to understand because even though cubits were still around the Fleet, most people just traded for what they needed. I couldn't imagine why anyone would need so many cubits when all that they had to do was make something that someone else needed instead.

It turned out that I was pretty good with plants, which was lucky since the agro ships were always short handed. I guess that people didn't like getting their hands dirty or something, but I always loved watching things grow, even if they were just plants. I miss that ship. I spent the happiest yahren of my life there, really, but eventually we moved most of the necessary equipment to the Galactica. Oh, that's this ship here, the one you got my journal from. It's the Battlestar Galactica, actually. Isn't that a grand sounding name? But it's the last battlestar, of course, the rest were destroyed along with the Colonies. Its last Commander was Commander Apollo. He was the son of Commander Adama, the man who led us to safety after the Destruction. I never met either of them, though I did meet Captain Starbuck once. He was handsome for an older man, with the kind of smile that made you want to grin back while checking to make sure that your pouch was still on your belt. It was a real shame that he and Doctor Cassiopeia never had kids. They would have made great parents, I think.

I'm rambling again, aren't I? It's hard to keep my focus nowadays. I'm so used to just talking to myself all of the time and I already know everything I'm trying to tell you. Does that make sense? Anyway, Captain Starbuck was in charge of the remaining Warriors who protected us. We had more pilots than Vipers, really, but that was fine. The Cylons haven't bothered the ship in around seventy yahren or so.

* * *

Relief flickers in the eyes of the woman avidly reading this transcript. There's hope that these people didn't bring the warlike...what was the name? Ah yes...Cylons...down on an unprepared Earth. 

Her worries eased, she now turned the pages even more quickly, her interest in this survivor's story piqued by what she's read so far.

* * *

They didn't need to bother us, really, and they probably knew it. We were already doomed and just hadn't figured it out at first. In time, when people began to realize what was happening, we tried to find a solution. The old saying about humanity being the most adaptable species in the universe kept being repeated around the Fleet. Hopes would rise and fall...even as our population count fell. Old age, sickness, Cylon attacks, they all combined to work against us. Our other enemy was time. One of my history teachers used to say that our lifespans averaged over 200 yahren, and that was the longest in the history of our race. He would conclude by saying, "We're either the luckiest, or the most damned humans that have ever lived." Toward the end we dropped the 'luckiest' and would just say that we were the most damned. 

I know I sound bitter, but it's hard not to be bitter when you've watched the decline of your people from the height of civilization...to nothing. And I mean what I say...we've become nothing. All that will remain to show the universe that we've been here is some ruins on the Colonies, and this ship, wherever she ends up. Odds are that the ruins are sand by now, dust created by Cylon destructive weapons, and odds are that this ship will never make it to it's final destination. But, as Captain Starbuck says, "There's always someone somewhere who beats the odds."

Rambling...always rambling. I'm too old to do this, but...let's continue, shall we? So the Fleet kept getting smaller and smaller. Ships were destroyed or had to be abandoned when they didn't work any more, or when we didn't have enough people left to operate them. People kept dying, as they tend to do, until finally we were all gathered here, on the Galactica. The scientists had done all that they could, but no answer was ever found, and so we resigned ourselves to our fates and continued the journey, hoping to find Commander Adama's 'shining planet, known as Earth' someday. I was the youngest, so I've watched as Commander Apollo had the crew rig an autopilot system with Earth's coordinates in it. Then I watched as they all died. After a while there weren't enough of us left to run the ship, but it didn't matter, it ran on it's own. They'd had enough foresight to rig all of the different functions to be self-maintaining. It's a good thing, too, because I'm a gardener, not a tech.

Sorry...I got distracted. It happens now that I'm old. Yes, I'm old. I'll be 227 yahren old today. That's why I sat down to do this. You see, I'm the only one left. It's kind of lonely, sitting in this chair and just watching the universe go by without anyone to share it with. Piter was my last companion, and he died almost ten yahren ago. I decided last night that I've had enough of being lonely, and I'm going to celebrate my natal day by finally going to join my fellow Colonists.

I have some final wishes, of course. Some I'll never get. I wish that I could see my mother again. She was so beautiful. I wish that I could have petted a real daggit once. I wish that I knew how to record my tinwhistle for you so that the songs wouldn't be lost forever. And I wish...I really wish...that I could have heard a real baby cry. Just once. I would just sit and absorb the sound through every pore because that sound is the most beautiful sound in the universe. It's the sound of hope, and of love, and of the future. A fleet without the ability to have children has no future...except this. I'm their future, and I'm ending today, and so the story of the Twelve Colonies will finally end with me. I hope that someone finds this journal, and maybe we'll be remembered. That's all that we can hope for now, isn't it?

* * *

The President closes the transcript cover, absently noting that the scientists had added a message stating that they were going to catalog the contents of the ship's...no, the Battlestar's...archives and that the archives appeared quite extensive. She sighs and shakes her head, "Maybe that's any of us can hope for...to be remembered. But that's one wish that will come true for you. We will remember." 

Startled, she lifts her head and then smiles as the sound of a child crying carries to her. The President of the Thirteenth Colony rose to her feet and moved out to the reception area to greet her new granddaughter for the first time.


End file.
